Vintage Photos of Paris, France During World War II

On 3 September 1939 France and Great Britain declare war against Germany, after the invasion of Poland.

France plunged into a dark age, occupied by the Nazis with the terrible implications bombing raids, executions, deportations, murders and famine. Slowly the resistance took shape and began to react, but against such a foe little changed. The population waited for liberation, living day by day under a control of an iron fist imposed by the collaboration of the Vichy government, the SS and Gestapo.

Freedom came with the arrival of the Allied Forces and the D-Day landings in Normandy, the French reacted to the calls of their self-exiled leader Charles de Gaulle. However effort to push the Germans back to the river Rhine was still long and heavy on victims.

(via Jeff's Flickr)